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news
PICT0451 2-3 screenshot (2)Near Miss of the Day 780: Cyclist tells police they should be “law enforcement, not school teachers” after high-speed close pass
A road.cc reader who got a very close pass from a van driver at speed was left unimpressed with the response from police, who said they would “educate” the driver – and told them they should be involved in “law enforcement, not school teachers.”
The incident happened on Wynyard Road near Billingham in County Durham, and it was Cleveland Police – who share roads policing duties with their colleagues in Durham, and who were doing a close pass operation at the time according to road.cc reader Paul – that dealt with it.
It really is a bit of a shocker, and let alone the close pass on the cyclist, we don’t imagine there was much space between the van and the car coming from the other direction, risking a head-on collision at what we’d guess would be way beyond 100mph.
Paul told us: “The policeman referred it to his sergeant, who said they were going to educate the driver,” he told us – his reply to the force being that they are “law enforcement, not school teachers.”
> Near Miss of the Day turns 100 - Why do we do the feature and what have we learnt from it?
Over the years road.cc has reported on literally hundreds of close passes and near misses involving badly driven vehicles from every corner of the country – so many, in fact, that we’ve decided to turn the phenomenon into a regular feature on the site. One day hopefully we will run out of close passes and near misses to report on, but until that happy day arrives, Near Miss of the Day will keep rolling on.
If you’ve caught on camera a close encounter of the uncomfortable kind with another road user that you’d like to share with the wider cycling community please send it to us at info [at] road.cc or send us a message via the road.cc Facebook page.
If the video is on YouTube, please send us a link, if not we can add any footage you supply to our YouTube channel as an unlisted video (so it won't show up on searches).
Please also let us know whether you contacted the police and if so what their reaction was, as well as the reaction of the vehicle operator if it was a bus, lorry or van with company markings etc.
> What to do if you capture a near miss or close pass (or worse) on camera while cycling
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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28 comments
That was pure luck that there wasn't a fatality. A few inches either way and it would have been life ending for someone either in the van, the cyclist or in the car.
Ratbag driving for sure, but leaving only inches either side like that actually takes skill, so not pure luck at all.
This is a good example of why a camera should be mounted on the bike, not the rider.
yep.. and minimum front and rear camera as well.
Those police need to have a think about what their job is about
Christ, there's no way that ringpiece didn't know what he was doing. I've watched / listened to this a few times, and I'm pretty sure he actually changes down to accelerate and make it worse that it already is.
Very high speed, no actual motion to overtake - the cyclist is lucky that the van was being driven a bit further out into the lane. How on earth the local police didn't think it worthy of a more serious response than 'having a word'...
(pass is at approx. 2 minutes in; blink and you'll miss it!)
Fracking hell!
I nearly choked on my coffee that was so shocking.
Needs to have their licence removed immediately for driving like that!
Terrible driving - more action against the driver needed....
Ooof that's a bit of a shocker. What a scumbag in that van. That should really be a prosecution.
Truly awful pass and ridiculous response by the police.
I'm glad I have my camera fixed to an out front mount though looking at that footage. I'm wondering if having a fixed (sort of) point of reference would make any difference in some cases (not this one though which was bloody obvious!).
The police are demonstrating time and time again that they are not able to provide an effective deterrent to this dangerous behaviour on our roads.
It's time the government remove responsibility from the police for enforcing inconsiderate and careless driving, and create a national organisation who would be better suited to the task.
Hmm, not sure I understand that last paragraph.
However, when your to do list is 23 pages long, the choice of adding a court case in a year's time which will take you off the job for a day vs writing a letter must be tempting especially after some experience with the CPS.
Yes it's much better to cross it off the to-do list and then complain 18 months down the line when the same driver has caused yet more paperwork by killing another road user.
The problem is that the mindset of drivers like this is that if they can pass you as close as possible without actually hitting you, they see it as a demonstration of their driving skill and actually means in their minds that they are good drivers not bad.
These type of drivers see passing a cyclist the same as passing a lampost or a parked car and no amount of 'education' is going to change that.
I suspect a custodial sentence will educate them.
When you see 'painted line' bike lanes that are the width of a bike, so that passing traffic is only inches away like this van, it's no wonder that drivers think it's ok to pass so closely..
The only education that driver should be facing is from a professional instructor whilst preparing for an extended retest following a lengthy ban.
The long lead up simply hilights how much time the driver had to see the cyclist and to plan for a safe overtake. An utterly heinous piece of road crime from a driver who is clearly a danger to all road users.
If the police think they need to "educate" drivers, what does this say about the quality of learner instruction and the driving test?
Frankly, that driver knows his driving is unacceptable and until it is appropriately punished with a ban it will continue. No amount of "education " will have any effect.
Eff me! millimetres from certain death, but the police treat it about as seriously as shoplifting. That should have been a dangerous driving charge with forensic analysis of the video to determine the speed and passing distance.
We seem to be in the same territory as the USA with their guns, which can't be challenged; they have a right to own a gun, we have the right to drive. In the UK, cars are our guns, and there are mass killings every week, but, hey, they're cars, so who cares; certainly not the police or the politicians.
Well I calculate the van was doing around 70mph when it went past. For reference, the maroon SUV that follows is doing around 48mph.
Speed limit for a van would be 50mph on that NSL single carriageway road. It's well over the limit, beyond any margin of error doubt.
Why would a driver even do this on a road with such light traffic? Does saving five seconds (or less) truly outweigh the risk of killing someone in the UK?
Yes. The question is why anyone would behave like that, and the answers, I suspect, are complex, involving entitlement, arrogance, viewing cyclists as subhuman and lack of empathy. I'm sure that transport pyschologists have explanations for these things.
Because they can. Human default behaviour often trumps training - keep your speed, where there's a gap go through it.
Although these still generate debate in The Netherlands generally the idea is increasingly "where people can go quickly and you could run into traffic coming another direction, disallow overtaking - even where visibility is good". Some examples:
Looking at the timestamp I'm impressed that he managed to get the police to take action on a future crime at all ... but I suppose if they don't investigate crimes that happened in the past there's limited options left for what they *can* do ...
Bloody hell that was a crazy pass, didn't even get near the white line at an unsafe speed against oncoming traffic. Shocking behaviour, and utterly poor enforcement.
(Mark Hodson agrees)
Utterly terrible. an obvious dangerous pass at well over the speed limit
actually, the van tyres were right on the white line..